Just before Christmas, I was down in St. Louis and offered to take one of my dealers out to dinner. We were sort of trying to figure out where to go and one of the guys suggested a steakhouse called Twisted Tree that had opened over a year before in the former Mile 277 restaurant in the Holiday Inn at the corner of Watson Road and Lindburgh Blvd. in the Sunset Hills area of St. Louis. (see map) He hadn't eaten there, but he had heard good things about the place. I thought that sounded pretty good, so we ended up heading over there for dinner that evening.
Kirk Syberg is the son of Richard and Sally Syberg, the co-founders of the popular small chain of restaurants in the St. Louis area - Syberg's. (Click here to see the Road Tips entry on Syberg's from 2013.) Kirk now oversees the day-to-day operations of the restaurants that his father and mother started over 45 years ago, as well as the operations at the popular Helen Fitzgerald's Irish pub just down the road from the Twisted Tree. Kirk Syberg has a farm in northern Missouri that he likes to go to to get away from business for awhile and one of his favorite places to eat while he was there was The Pear Tree, a fine dining destination restaurant located in the small town of Bevier, MO.
Over the years, Kirk Syberg became friendly with Mike Abbadessa, who owned the Pear Tree along with his father, Al. The Abbadessa family were well-known in northern Missouri for their restaurants, but none of them were as nice as the upscale, yet unpretentious Pear Tree. (Side note - about 30 years ago I called on a dealer in Kirksville, MO and one of the employees working there was an Abbadessa. He was a nice young guy and we got on very well. He went on to run a couple three restaurants/bars in the Kirksville area for the Abbadessa family, but I have completely lost touch with him later in life.)
The Pear Tree opened in 1986 with just 75 seats in the restaurant. However, it became so popular that it had expanded to over 200 seats by 2000. Staff turnover was very low at The Pear Tree - it was said that only 12 waitresses worked in the place during the 25 plus years it was open. But a fire in 2012 destroyed the ornate 19th century building in which The Pear Tree was housed and the restaurant was out of business.
Well, for awhile, anyhow. Al and Mike Abbadessa had opened a steakhouse/bar/grill in nearby Macon - A.J.'s Eat and Drink - a couple years prior. Al's grandson and Mike's nephew, Wade, had joined them in the business working his way up from a dishwasher to become the manager of A.J.'s. The Abbadessa family was planning to rebuild The Pear Tree from the ground up. However, Wade was struck with Ewing's Sarcoma and passed away at the age of 26. Suddenly not wanting to have to oversee two restaurants, Mike Abbadessa pulled the plug on the plans to rebuild The Pear Tree, and instead incorporated the restaurant's menu into the menu they had at A.J.'s. They rebranded the restaurant as A.J.'s Eat and Drink - the Steakhouse. (A fire in December of 2015 damaged parts of A.J.'s, but not to the extent where they could not salvage and rebuild the restaurant.)
Kirk Syberg's friendship with Mike Abbadessa was the catalyst for the chance to work together in a joint venture that eventually became the Twisted Tree Steakhouse. The cross-pollination of kitchen and management staffs from The Pear Tree and Syberg family restaurants, as well as adding noted St. Louis chef Jimmy Kistro, allowed the families to feed off each other in coming up with a menu that features about 90 percent of what was on the menu at The Pear Tree including the delicious housemade salad dressings and their famous battered lobster. Using a rustic motif as the basis of the decor to give the place a laid-back feeling even with a high-end food selection, the Twisted Tree opened in July of 2016.
We made reservations through Open Table before we left and they were waiting for us to be seated when we all got into the restaurant about 30 minutes later. We all met up in the bar area that was packed with diners and festooned with holiday lights and decorations.
The bar and restaurant area also featured a number of old time beer signs from breweries that were - or still are - in St. Louis. And the signs appeared to be truly antique instead of recreations of old beer signs. There were many beer signs around the restaurant and bar and before I left I made it a point to check each of them out.
There was a large dining off to the side of the bar area that looked like it was pretty nice. When the host turned to take us to our seats, he didn't go into the dining room. We were sort of surprised about that as there were open tables in there. I told the guys that it could be that there were probably already reservations for those tables before we made ours just a half hour before.
We were seated in a room off the bar area at a high top table. Our server for the evening, a nice guy by the name of Todd, came over to greet us and immediately he said, "Hey, you guys. Did you want to sit in here? I think our manager was confused as to where you wanted to sit. There weren't a lot of people in the room where we were and everyone was happy with sitting there. We all started out ordering some of the craft beers they had available on tap and in bottles at Twisted Tree. I got the Ballast Point Scuplin IPA for my beer.
The menu was definitely steak-centric. They did have seafood on the menu including the aforementioned battered lobster tail, as well as lobster ravioli, a bourbon-apricot glazed salmon, and an Alaskan halibut. They also had a red grouper on special that evening. They also had a pork chop on the menu, chicken dishes and a vegetable pasta for the non-carnivores in the crowd.
But the steaks are the main item and Todd explained to us the different cuts of beef and the process they go about in aging their meat. The strip steaks are aged for 130 days while the ribeye was aged 125 days. "We only age our tenderloin for 54 days," he explained. "It's pretty tender to begin with." Me - I'm not a large fan of aged beef as I think that it zaps the flavor out of the beef in some cases.
We started out with an appetizer, the beer-battered onion rings. They were served with a spicy remoulade sauce on the side. The onion rings, in a word, were spectacular. They were some of the best I've ever had. The onions were cut thick and the flaky beer-batter was light, but had a great flavor to it. The remoulade sauce had just enough of a spicy bite to it to keep things interesting without overpowering the wonderful onion rings. We made quick work of the onion rings and when Todd came around to take our food order, we said we needed another batch of the rings.
The salad is served family style at Twisted Tree. It featured a large metal bowl of fresh greens with croutons, sliced veggies and and was served with both the Pear Tree Vinaigrette or their French dressing. I had some of both the French and the vinaigrette dressings and while I thought they were good,
We noticed early on that the meat was served on a platter to a table near us. It was a nice little presentation where Todd served the beef table-side onto large plates, while other servers brought out the sides we had ordered.
I went with the prime rib - I was leery of the aged steaks and they had an 8, 12 or 20 ounce prime rib available. I went with the 12 ounce cut - I just didn't think I could finish a 20 ounce prime rib - and asked Todd if he could bring out some sautéed mushrooms and a bowl of the peppercorn sauce with the prime rib. Well, he brought enough sautéed mushrooms for not only our table but for a couple other tables, as well. For a side that evening, I got the white cheddar au gratin potatoes.
The prime rib was wonderful. I asked Todd to have the chef cut me off the most rare piece of prime rib he had in the kitchen and this one was what I would call rare plus. It was tender, juicy, robust, and tasty. The sautéed mushrooms and the the au jus on the beef were a great compliment on their own. The peppercorn sauce was a bit underwhelming, so I had Todd bring me a bowl of their ground horseradish. While not as hot or spicy as I would have liked, the horseradish really helped open up the taste buds allowing more of the great beef flavor of the prime rib settle on my tongue.
The white cheddar au gratin potatoes were very good, as well. They were layered with sheets of potatoes with the white cheddar in between. The au gratin potatoes were superb.
The rest of the guys got either the aged Kansas City strip steak or the beef tenderloin. Two of the guys got the thick cut, 14 ounce strip steaks - they also had an 18 ounce strip steak available - while my other guest got the 8 ounce tenderloin. (A 6 ounce and a 12 ounce tenderloin were also available.)
One of my guests got the strip steak with a side of the lobster mashed potatoes. Now, I've been burned on some mediocre lobster mashed potatoes in the past, but these actually had large chunks of lobster meat in with the potatoes. It was just a four dollar upcharge for the poached lobster to be added to the mashed potatoes, but from all appearances - and his "thumbs up" when asked how they were - it was worth the upcharge and then some.
The two guys seemed to like their strips steaks, but my guest who got the tenderloin wasn't as impressed. "It's tender, all right," he said. "But it's lacking in flavor." Beef tenderloin doesn't have the flavor compared to a ribeye steak, but when you age it I think it takes even more of the flavor out of the steaks. That was one of the big reasons I went with the prime rib and not the steak that evening.
Overall, I'd have to say that the meal we had at Twisted Tree was very good to outstanding. I really enjoyed my prime rib, the potatoes au gratin with the white cheddar cheese were wonderful, my guests liked their meals - with the exception of my guest who wasn't overly enamored with his beef tenderloin filet - and the onion rings that we had as an appetizer were simply outrageous in taste. We had great service all night long, the presentation of the meat before the meal was a nice touch, and the overall experience was top-notch. Twisted Tree is a great addition to the already great food scene in St. Louis.
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